Fri­day I ven­tured out to the movies to see the remake of the Japan­ese film, Old­boy.  I was fairly cer­tain it would be a poor remake as most Amer­i­can remakes are, but I should have kept faith in Spike Lee’s abil­ity to make a fan­tas­tic movie.  I felt there were some aspects that of the orig­i­nal bet­ter than the remake, but not enough to make this a movie to miss.

Yes, there is some loss in trans­la­tion issues.  There aren’t as many sub­tle hints as the orig­i­nal, and this is clearly an Amer­i­can film with the abun­dance of gore.  Lee goes all out on some of the tor­ture scenes and I do not rec­om­mend for any­one with a weak stomach.

Lee takes his time to really build this story and like the orig­i­nal, at times, the movie moves slowly through its paces until the end when the world comes crash­ing down.  Despite the extra gore, and not much dif­fer­ing from the orig­i­nal  the result is still as shock­ing when you see it as it was in the original.

There is always tough com­pe­ti­tion and crit­i­cism when a great movie is remade.  When taken in com­par­i­son to the orig­i­nal, it does fall short, but it’s very hard to improve upon an already great movie.  How­ever, if taken on its own, for­get­ting the con­nec­tions and what wasn’t exactly the same, it is a good movie.  Not great, but good.

Have you seen this? Let us know in the com­ments what you thought.

Related arti­cles

• A Korean Import turned Amer­i­can: Oldboy
• ‘Old­boy’ Remake: Did Spike Lee Just Mess Up A Bril­liant Movie?
• ‘Old­boy’ Claws Back Respectabil­ity, But Crit­ics Remain Unconvinced
• Movie Review: Old­boy will feel old hat, but only to those who’ve seen the original